Moving Boxes and Posh, Fancy Dresses

Hello again, sorry I’ve been away for a few days but I’ve been incredibly busy! The weekend was spent in Surrey visiting family and helping my mum’s cousin start sorting out things so she can move house.This involved a LOT of running up and down stairs carrying different boxes that had been in the loft into different piles (the biggest of which was ‘rubbish’ and was in the front garden ready for a skip). It’s amazing what people hoard in lofts. We found 3 kettles (none of which worked), loads of chair cushions, curtains, material, mouldy carpets, picture frames, an X-ray that had belonged to the people that lived in the house before (about 40 years ago!) etc. Everything was neatly labelled though, which helped a lot. There were even about 5 or 6 boxes labelled ‘Empty Box Including Packaging’. Crazy!

We got loads done and everyone was exhausted when we’d finished. We ordered pizza for tea and ate out of the boxes on our laps, which made my mum very excited as she’d never had pizza delivered before. We stayed over and then helped clear out some other places the next morning before heading home with a full car of things my mum’s cousin didn’t want any more. Me and my mum both gained a television and we each got a few paintings, books, scarves – that sort of thing.

Because I’d been picked up to go home on Friday afternoon (after me and my mum enjoyed a very tasty, yet quite cheap pub lunch at the campus pub) and was dropped off again on Monday morning, yesterday was spent hurriedly doing all the work I was supposed to have done over the weekend that was in for this morning. I say this, but actually because I go around to my friends’ halls so we can all work together, the evening naturally progressed to playing Rock Band on the X-Box. For those that don’t know, this is a game where you have fake guitars/drums/microphones and play as a band on the X-Box. I actually love this game. I’ve only played a few times, so I completely suck but I think it’s much more important that I perfect my fake guitar skills than pass my degree. So Rock Band it was until 10 in the evening (for me anyway, I left early because I’m a sensible girl – haha!) and then I went home and finished most of my report that was due in today.

The report had to be handed in before 12 noon, so I set my alarm for 9:45 so I could go through it one last time and check for any silly mistakes. I actually woke up around 9am and just dozed in and out of sleep for a few minutes until I thought, “Oh my God, I’ve got loads to do, I have to copy all those graphs in and everything, I have to get up NOW!”. As you can imagine, this woke me up completely which is why I then thought, “Don’t be stupid Alice, you finished it all completely last night. You added the graphs in, all you need to do is read through it.” Of course, after that I couldn’t get back to sleep so got up early anyway. This will teach me for playing games instead of doing work the night before it’s due in!

My printer’s playing up at the moment, so I arranged to meet with my friends at quarter past eleven so we’d have time to walk up and print out our reports before 12. Only, when we get to the computer room, there are no computers spare at all. We waited for a while until the helper said that we should try another computer room down the hall. When we got there though, there was a class so we decided to walk over to the hand in place so my friend could hand in hers as she’d already printed hers out. When we got there, it was about 10 to 12, so I told the people there that both me and my other friend had done the report, we were just having trouble printing it so we might be a few minutes late. She gave us one of those disbelieving looks that only people who are waiting for you to hand in work can truly deliver. So then we ran around like headless chickens trying to find an unused computer room and eventually ended up in the main one, which is where we’d started.

The helper was very nice and went up to one of the people using a computer and explained our situation. The person kindly agreed to let us quickly print off the reports, so we rushed to try and get them to print. It took about 3 attempts to get mine to print, which was very awkward because the printer was downstairs and we were upstairs, so every time I pressed print, I had to run downstairs, then back upstairs when I found that it hadn’t printed. This was made even worse by the person standing behind us waiting to get his computer back while this was going on. Anyway, they eventually printed and we managed to hand them in 2 minutes late and no-one noticed so that was good!

In other news, I’m going to a masquerade ball tonight which should be fun. It said it was a black tie event, so none of the girls really knew how formal to dress. After much deliberation, I decided to wear my prom dress from year 11 (which was 3 years ago), as it’s the only formal dress I have. I tried it on at the weekend and thankfully I can still just about squeeze into it. This is my whole outfit:

(Obviously I’m not wearing the ticket, that would be weird. It’s there for safe keeping because I would definitely loose it otherwise!) Also my friend said she has a better mask that I can borrow, as the black one is just the one you get with your ticket. I haven’t seen it yet, but I hope it’s good because there are Amazon vouchers as prizes for the best mask. I suppose it would be the decent thing to offer her the money if I won though – we’ll see!

I love the detailing on the dress, it’s so pretty! We left it quite late to buy a prom dress, so there wasn’t much left but we were walking through Debenhams and this one just jumped out at us. Plus it had a crazy discount on it too! It’s nice to know that it will get another wear out of it, as I don’t often have reason to go parading around in a fancy, posh dress.

The shoes were ones I got for Heather‘s wedding that I also wore for my prom. (Please ignore the fact that I bought the wrong squidgy things that stop your feet from hurting. They’re actually meant for shoes with a bit that goes in between your toes, so there’s a random bit that sticks up in between my big toe and the one next to it. You can’t see it when I wear them though.)

There are tons of things going on tonight, including casino games which I think my mum is slightly worried about (she’s certain I’m going to become a gambling addict at some point due to my awesomeness at the 10p machines they had at the bowling alley we used to go to).

I realised earlier today that not only do I have to manoeuvre myself whilst wearing heels (I’m not well practised at this. I only own two pairs and have only worn them about 3 times!), but I have to eat a three course meal, including soup, without spilling any on my fancy, posh dress. I’ll report back tomorrow with how it all goes, but I can only see this going one way: